Turbulence

Driving this back country road, you bother a sheen of crows

on a half-flattened wallaby carcass – its insides steaming, marbled,

glistening. Flocking indolently into the needlepoint light,

the crows updraft tufts of fur – motes of memory: under the pine trees,

and just a slip of a child, you shot the sulphur-crested cockatoo

– its uninjured wing flailing – as it plummeted, crashing into branches.

Unhinged, the crackle of cockatoos screeched around the bird

with the broken wing flapping in circles on the pine-needle earth.

(You had meant, possibly, to shoot a lead slug into the crown

of the tree to detonate them into the sky.) The cockatoos were suddenly

beyond the pines – dishevelled wisps of white; their shrieking a din

with ragged claws, and you, buckling. You stilled your sweaty hands

and shot the sulphur-crested cockatoo in the head – the whump

and the dark-marble eye, set in its pale blue ring of skin, had you

in a cold sweat, retching. Picking up this limp thing by its broken wing

– its feathers downy and powdery and matted in your clammy hand –

you trudged home, sobbing. The winding road: your laundered conscience

hung out to dry; your memory, one-third a shadow, two-thirds a sentry.